Thursday, August 14, 2008

Living large

Mack cleared his throat. “Friends, on behalf of I and the boys it gives me pleasure to present Doc with this here.” Doc looked at the gift—a telescope strong enough to bring the moon to his lap. His mouth fell open. Then he smothered the laughter that rose in him. “Like it?” said Mack. “It's beautiful.” “Biggest one in the whole goddam catalogue,” said Mack. Doc's voice was choked. “Thanks,” he said. He paused. “After all, I guess it doesn't matter whether you look down or up—as long as you look.”

5 comments:

I have written some thoughts which fit a bit with some of yourblog and comments. Well they do for me.They are in this dorky powerpoint.Well they started there =).http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dfdk6g63_134gmcvmqdvSome are about how we view ie telescope/microscope kind of inversion.And how we need to use fences to understand things rather thanseeing them in context, which is what you do here.

Your presentation led me to run off a long strand here, which I promptly lost when trying to post.

I suspect "dorky" means something different in Oz--I found the presentation both eye-catching and mind-boggling.

I'm not sure I saw the presentation you were citing, but the one I saw opened my eyes--I had not realized what now seems obvious, the emphasis on monoculture as a choice.

I want to rush out and show your presentation to my classes, but given the curriculum, it might be a stretch, though I may borrow the last slide with attribution (if that's OK).

At the least, I hope that my students come to see science as stories told within explicit boundaries, useful because of these boundaries, but also shaped by those boundaries.

Back in 1976 I had a history teacher, Ms. Roberts, who changed the way I looked at history. She required us to write a term paper using nothing but primary sources, a royal pain in the gluteus back in those days, requiring several trips to various libraries.

While I do not remember what I wrote, I do remember that after perusing all kinds of documents, I realized that the history ("story") could be told several ways, and that my view, drawn from primary sources as opposed to the distilled voice of some expert (as far as textbook authors are experts), mattered.

Ms. Roberts could have led us down the cynical path that experts are not to be trusted, but that's not what she did. She taught us how to sift through the available documents, to know a little bit what it means for something to be "true."

The scary part was learning that what were considered to be truths in history were often based onvery little evidence--and I learned to stop presuming truth without looking at evidence.

I showed it to someone once who said that I should not link to it because it was not very professional. Eye of the beholder perhaps.

You're welcome to use it.But as per your response I think the interesting stuff is in the references.Wade Davis, Hoebeke.

I am also reading Carse's finite and infinite games. This video has some of the thoughts. The example of the basketball game is useful.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRHVzbJVx8I

Some thoughts I've had earlier:============From annotated Zittrain conclusion:"Locking down the internet is just pulling the blinds on a runaway train.The risks of the generative internet are that in a connected openspace we can see the global damage we are doing as more than astatistic. It becomes a part of our context and dialogue.

If our economic systems make it more viable to spam than to makeconstructive work in a local region it is not the websites which needfixing.

The real challenge of the generative internet is as an opportunity toremove the blindfold on what we are making with current globaleconomic and social practices and to look for models which make itpossible to be diverse, distributed, collaborative and constructive.

If our real physical structures and patterns are just andconstructive. If it is apparent in them that constructive contributionis useful we are less likely to need this conversation becauseconstructive work is what is valued and valuable by our wider context.

Locking down the internet is just pulling the blinds on a runaway train.

Being able to see each other is confronting.How is it that online warfare of bits and pixels causes strongreactions and changes in law whereas f2f warfare kills people,communities and ecologies but does not produce changes in the systemswhich make them.

The generative internet shows us what we value. Increasingly it alsoshows us what is not valued. It also shows us in our social fabricthat we have a lot of people who identify with being without value.

Finding ways to make society and ecology which weave back in ways tovalue diversityare the real changes we need to make in order not to have to fence things in.

Free software and access to knowledge approaches to education aretechnology and information based expressions of this kind of ecologybased approach to participation.

We need better skills in contributing effectively and constructivelyrather than mechanisms to divide people.

===Doc Searls suggested that we get what we frame. I dont think adiscussion on which power stations reframes the problem.

The problem is that we cannot see the impact of our actions on ourcontext. Any answer to power or any other question related to the kindof impacts of our current scale and mode of operation need to respondto custodianship as the first priority.If we can all see what custodianship looks like in a local sense thenI think this would mean something to us individually.

We have developed abstractions which are responsive to the money whichsponsors them, but which is therefore optimised for a centralunderstanding of profit and loss and which is not optimised for alocal understanding of fidelity and consequence.

We could use approaches like the bloom clock or dnetc or etc to makeapparent all the real data about our local context. Kids in schoolscollecting real data about their local context for real purpose. Wecould be custodians of that flow; of the shift in diversity, waterquality, use and development of power capacity.

The primary problem with this suggestion is that at the moment we donot have the skills to navigate that kind of mesh of data in acustodian flavoured way. We are more likely to use it as a method tobe more mobile and exploitative.

We have to make a choice between the finite and the infinite game.

The people who are likely to make those choices are possibly going tobe different people from those who currently win in the finite game.Not many people stop a game which they are winning at even if they cansee that the long term outcome is destructive.

We are out of practice at playing the infinite game. We have tools andlanguage optimised for functioning at scale with simple data, ratherthan locally with fidelity and local responsiveness. We find itdifficult to value biodiversity for its own sake, or culturaldiversity or variant perspectives. We are mistrustful of contextswhere there is not a clear winner. Being able to develop this kind ofthinking and skill and capacity to keep 'life in play' is imho thereframing which we need to make different outcomes.

I have been approaching this at a different angle, but coming to the same idea. Your response makes it intelligible in today's less-than-connected-to-the-earth world.

Wendell Berry talks of usufruct, an old word, one now perhaps wrapped in too much legalese. I love the word "custodianship."

"The problem is that we cannot see the impact of our actions on ourcontext." I think we can--other human cultures have--the bigger problem is that we choose not to.

Framing this as playing the finite vs. the infinite game works. Those playing the finite game (temporarily) won once they started fencing off the commons.

And you're right; I suspect that those who even pause to make the distinction between the finite and the infinite game will be different than those who continue to play the finite game. Once you recognize the choice, you can no longer stay in the finite game and remain comfortable in your human skin.

Some will shed their skin. I have faith, however, that most who see the choices will choose to remain human, and when enough people choose to do that, the infinite game becomes possible again.